Duke football coach Manny Diaz speaks out on Florida State shooting, calls for change
DURHAM — Before Duke football coach Manny Diaz discussed the Blue Devils' spring game on April 19 at Wallace Wade Stadium, he spent 75 seconds providing his thoughts on the mass shooting at Florida State University .
Two people were killed and six others were injured at FSU on April 17 in the second shooting on campus since 2014.
"I want to take this opportunity to comment on what unfolded this week in Tallahassee at my alma mater, where my wife went to school, my son went to school, my sister went to school," Diaz said at the start of his pop-up press conference on Brooks Field. "I've got a niece that currently goes to school there. Everybody here with Duke football is thinking about everybody associated with Florida State University."
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The 51-year-old Diaz, who is in his second season as leader of the Blue Devils, graduated from FSU in 1995 and worked as a graduate assistant for the Seminoles football team under the late Bobby Bowden for two years in 1998 and a national-title winning season in 1999.
"The saddest part of the entire situation is that, as an alum, I forgot it's actually the second (shooting) that happened there since I graduated," Diaz said, referencing the 2014 FSU shooting at a library on campus, where three people were injured.
"That's the real danger of this, is how normalized these things are becoming. To say that this is just a thing that happens, it's unacceptable. Again, we just cannot continue to allow these things to go on. It's a multi-faceted solution; there's no easy answers.
"But it's about time somebody comes up with some answers, because we can't send our kids to schools and have situations like this happen. Just felt that, again, we want to express our thoughts here at Duke to everybody down there at Tallahassee as one of our ACC brethren. But also as just fellow Americans."
There have been at least 81 mass shootings in the United States in 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Rodd Baxley covers Duke, North Carolina and N.C. State for The Fayetteville Observer as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his ACC coverage on X/Twitter or Bluesky: @RoddBaxley. Got questions regarding those teams? Send them to rbaxley@fayobserver.com .
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Duke football coach Manny Diaz calls for change after Florida State shooting
